


The Dance of Six Candles

by petercapaldiscoiffure



Series: Emeline Trevelyan [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 04:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2837798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petercapaldiscoiffure/pseuds/petercapaldiscoiffure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows he wants her that first time they dance. He only hopes she wants him, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dance of Six Candles

**Author's Note:**

> According to party banter, Vivienne has been teaching Iron Bull the steps to some court dances - the Dance of Six Candles being specifically named. I found it kind of hilarious.

**T** he Iron Bull wants a lot of things - wine, sex, money, blood - and so the Iron Bull  _wanting_  is no surprise.  But he only knows,  _really_  knows that he wants  _her_  that first time they dance.

Oh, he’d fancied the Inquisitor before - he fancies most anyone that can make him laugh or rage or maybe just has a pretty enough face. Sometimes when she slants her shy eyes at him she puts him in mind of some delicate hothouse flower just waiting to be plucked. Other times, times when her face goes dark and he can see the shock of bloodthirst as clear as on any soldier, it’s a Seheron summer storm he thinks of. Both have their own appeal.

But the burning of  _want_ , flaring up deep in his gut and places decidedly lower, comes roaring to life when she’s laughing loose and tipsy in the tavern and teasing about Vivienne’s dance lessons. It’s a good night - they’ve cleared the Hinterlands of the last of the Templars and the wayward mages both this week, no injured; the tavern is filled with music and laughter and the fires’ flames are crackling shadow and light, burnished red across her dark auburn hair.

"Come on, then," she says. His eyes lower to where her crooked white teeth are biting her lip, teasing. "Show me what you’ve learned." He thinks he’d like to show her a lot of things. 

Instead he grumbles, but her small hand is grasping his, soft satin against battered old leather, and she’s pulling him to the floor amidst the Charger’s cheers, and he finds he’s laughing now, too. Maryden’s been joined by a stablehand turned fiddler and a merc with a tinpan flute, and the music is boisterous, too fast for the stately waltzes Vivienne’s been drilling into him. But she pays it no mind and he follows suit, and she guides his hand to her waist, her own to his shoulder and they begin - step, slide, step, step, slide. And damn if they don’t manage it - he might have been a bull in a china shop and her the china, and maybe they’re a little out of sync with the music, but together they move right in time. Then she’s giggling  and instructing him to spin her round -  _because what’s the point if you don’t go dizzy from it all_ , she says, and that sounds true enough to him. 

So he does, and when she spins round and out and back into his orbit she collapses against him like any star meeting it’s inevitable end, and when hazel eyes flutter up to meet grey and the heat of her presses against his skin - he knows then that yes, he wants her. He wants her salt and her sweet and her slender fingers digging into his skin until there’s bruises and the name on her lips isn’t that of her Maker but his, over and over, until they’re one and the same.

He only hopes maybe she’ll want him, too.


End file.
